“Liz, I’m so happy right now,” Alex sang as she twirled around our hotel room.
“You have every reason to be,” I said, arranging my flowers in the coffee pot that was serving as my make-shift vase.
“Oh my God. When we got to the car...”
“Who won?”
“He did, but I was in a dress so that doesn’t count.” She fell on to her bed and stared at the ceiling dreamily. “I was leaning against the car catching my breath cause he really did park far away, and he leaned over and kissed me. It was so gentle and... Oh, I just wanted to melt right there and then. He got kinda shy and flustered afterwards. It was so adorable.”
I felt a twinge of jealousy in my gut as I watched my friend. I could tell she was replaying the moment over and over again in her mind.
I pulled Lance’s coat around me as I sat down in a chair. We may not have gone quite as far as Justin and Alex had, but I could tell there was something special there.
“I told you that you were Justin’s dream girl.”
“He’s such a sweetheart.” She propped herself up on her arm and looked at me. “You okay?”
“Huh?”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m just thinking.”
“Do you believe me now?”
“That Lance likes me?”
“No, that the moon is made of cheese. YES, that Lance likes you.”
“Yeah.”
“So I’m dying to know, would that kiss in the parking lot have been your first or did something happen when ya’ll were in the bathroom...”
“Alex!”
“Cause we were all talking when you were gone, and they were saying how Lance liked you and everything. They asked me what you were doing, and I told them that you were talking, and they were all like maybe they’re not talking. They know Lance better than we do, and I don’t know if he would’ve tried anything...”
“He was a perfect gentleman the whole time. All we did was talk.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t know why you’re apologizing. It was really nice. If anything were gonna happen between Lance and me, I’m glad it will be slow.”
“Why are you questioning this?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes you do, and this is ridiculous. Lance, a complete sweetie, likes you a lot. You two were in that bathroom forever. All during dinner you were exchanging these looks. And I saw you in the parking lot. Don’t even try to deny how happy you were...”
“But...”
“But nothing! I have never in my 16 years of knowing you seen you like this. Stop questioning what you have going.”
“It’s only been a week, Alex. A week! It is entirely too early to start any kind of relationship even if it is with the man of my dreams!”
“Scott is a jerk. You saw him in that car, Elizabeth. Remember that?”
“Yes.”
“So forget about him and move on.”
If only it were that easy. -
“Alex,” I began on the cab ride to the basketball court we were meeting the guys at. “Do you honestly think you can convince him that hockey is better. I mean, this is Justin we’re talking about.”
“Of course not,” she smiled. “He’s just fun to mess around with.”
The car stopped outside a huge gym. Inside Justin was practicing towards one end of the court, and Lance was sitting on the bleachers talking to him.
“Justin!” Alex yelled as she came into the room, dropping her backpack on the floor. “You ready to get your butt whipped?”
“I’d like to see you try and take me down!”
“Oh, you’re so going down, buddy.”
Lance looked to the door where I was standing before rising from his spot. “Hey, Elizabeth.”
“Hi,” I smiled back. “Um, here. Thanks for letting me use this last night.”
He took his suit jacket from my hand. “No problem. I already told you, we don’t want you to freeze to death.”
“Where are the other guys?”
“Oh, Joey went to visit some family today, and his little cousin has this huge crush on JC. Joe convinced him to go along with him. And Chris in going out sight seeing with this chick he met the last time we were in town.”
“A date?”
“Yeah, but he insists it’s completely casual.”
“And you decided you wanted to play basketball with Justin?”
“Well, you know, I figured that since Alex was coming you would probably come too,” he said, lightly blushing.
“Really?”
“Yeah. And I figured it would be kinda fun to play a little two on two with Jay and Alex.”
“I have to warn you, I’m not that good.”
“Neither am I. Don’t worry about it.” Lance grabbed my hand after throwing his coat to the bleachers and pulled me over to where Justin and Alex were arguing over the ball. He had his arms wrapped around the ball and was curled over it in protection mode. Alex had jumped on his back trying to persuade him to let her have it.
“Excuse me?”
“What!”
“Do you guys think you could stop for awhile and maybe play an actual game?”
Justin paused for a moment, looking interested. “Us verses you two?”
“Sure.”
“I bet we win,” Justin smiled, handing Alex the ball.
“J-dawg, don’t be so full of yourself,” his teammate teased.
“Have you ever seen Lance play?”
“Hey now,” he began. “Don’t start trash talkin’, or else I have a few things you said during the car ride home last night that may accidentally slip out.”
“Deal,” Justin said as his face became increasingly flushed. “But we’re still winnin’.”
“Loser buys winner ice cream.”
“I like the sound of that.”
After running around for nearly three hours and losing our rematch, we were all pretty happy when Lance bought us ice cream from the shop across the street. We took our cones back with us and lounged on the bleachers while watching some ten year old kids play.
“They’re pretty good for little kids,” Justin commented.
“Where do they get the energy?” Alex yawned. “I’m so tired now.”
“Me too,” I agreed, finishing the last bite of my cone. I laid down across the bleachers and used Lance’s leg as a pillow.
“God, my back hurts,” Alex whined, rubbing her left shoulder.
Justin got up and moved behind her. “I’ll fix that for ya.”
I watched the two of them as Justin leaned in to her and whispered something into her ear. Alex looked over at me and Lance and giggled lightly.
“You’re right,” she smiled.
“Naturally.”
“Right about what?” I asked, sitting up.
“Nothing.”
“Alex, what did he tell you?”
“I said it was hot.”
“Liar.”
“Um, it’s stupid.”
“Then you won’t mind sharing.”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Obviously.”
“Well, um, he was just saying that...” She trailed off and looked up at Justin.
“That what?”
“It would be fun to play with the little kids, that’s all.”
“Then you proceeded to look over here and laugh.”
“Hey,” Justin laughed, “you saw how Lance plays. Those ten year olds could probably kick his butt.”
“Remember what I said about trash talkin’, Jay?”
“Come on, Lex, let’s go,” Justin said, getting up quickly.
“Bye guys!” she smiled, happily getting away from my questions.
“I wanna know what they said,” I whined, laying my head back down as Lance began to play with my hair.
“Curiosity killed the cat.”
“What do you think they have nine lives for?”
“Is that what they’re for?” he laughed lightly.
“Not really,” I said, closing my eyes. The soft feeling of his fingertips brushing through my hair was slowly pushing me into a dream-like state.
“Holy shit!”
I sprung up quickly. Alex was curled up on the gym floor, holding her ankle in pain.
“Alex!” I yelled, running down to her. “Are you okay?”
“Do I look okay?” she snapped.
“Sorry.”
“Come on, Red. Let’s get you to the hospital.” Justin slid his arms around her and carefully picked her up. “You guys get all our stuff, and we’ll meet you there, okay?”
“Sure thing,” Lance said as they disappeared out the double doors. “Don’t worry, Elizabeth. She’s in good hands,” he smiled, draping his arms around my shoulder. -
“How is she?” I asked, running up to Justin when we arrived at the hospital.
“She’s okay, just suffering from a sprained ankle.”
“Sprained ankle? How did she manage to do that?” Lance said, joining me by his friend.
“Someone’s water bottle was leaking, and the floor was wet. She slipped while we were walking over to kids.”
“I’m gonna go see her. Where’s she at?”
“Um, room 21 I believe.”
“Thanks,” I hurried down the hall of the emergency room until I heard her voice.
“Thanks, Doc!”
I turned into a room where a doctor was exiting, laughing slightly, and found my friend holding wrapped band-aids to the light.
“Hi, sweetie. How ya doing?”
“Good. The doctor just gave me Muppet Baby band-aids. I think there’s one with Kermit on it for you.” She held another up and squinted in attempt to see the design.
“Why do you need those?”
“Oh,” she smiled. “I don’t. I just saw the box and asked for some.”
“How’s the foot?” I asked as I sat next to her tightly wrapped ankle.
“It hurts, but they said it should be fine in about five days.”
“Oh no. That’s like half our trip.”
“I have to use crutches.”
“Oh, I know,” I laughed. “We could rent a wheelchair, and I could push you around the city.”
“No way. I don’t trust you after you ran Amy into a fish tank last summer.”
“The wheel hit the side. That’s it. She was perfectly fine.”
“No.”
“Fine. We’ll just get you back to the hotel then.”
“This sucks,” Justin sighed as he sat in an uncomfortable orange chair in the waiting room.
“It could be worse,” I said, picking up a magazine.
“I hate hospitals.”
“I know, but that’s what you get for not telling Elizabeth what you said.”
“Telling Liz? Are you not the least bit curious to what it was?”
“I am,” I admitted. “But if I don’t find out, it won’t kill me.”
“It wasn’t anything bad.”
“I know.”
“I mean, it was just something I noticed in the gym.”
“Uh huh.”
“All I said is that I could see you two as an old married couple.”
I stopped looking through the pages of People to let what he said sink in. “An old married couple? Elizabeth and I?”
“Uh huh,” he said, taking the magazine from my lap. “God, that’s a bad picture of me.”
“How do you figure?”
“Loot at it man. It’s horrible.” He made a face of disgust as he pointed to himself.
“Not that, you moron.”
“Oh that. It’s just the way you two are with each other. It’s so... I don’t know. It’s not something you find everyday. You can tell you’ll be together for awhile.”
“Together! I wouldn’t say we’re together exactly. I mean we haven’t even ki... Never mind.”
“You haven’t kissed her yet?”
“No.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Why the hell would I?”
“Lance!”
“I just have to find the right time to do it. It has to come naturally.”
“Don’t tell me there hasn’t been a few times you wanted to. I saw you last night, buddy, and it looked pretty natural to me.”
“I can’t yet.”
“Once again, why the hell not?”
“The whole Scott thing was only a week ago, Jay. And I don’t want to rush her. I don’t want to ruin what could potentially be a great relationship all because I wanted a kiss.”
“Wait. A week?”
“Yeah, like ten days ago.”
“Can we say rebound?”
“It’s not like that.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do. Besides it’s not that big of a deal. I’m sure you and Alex haven’t...” A guilty look spread across his face. “You’ve kissed her.”
“Twice.”
“When did you find the time?”
“It’s not hard to do when you put your mind to it.”
“Okay, so the first time was...”
“Last night after I beat her to the car.”
“Second?”
He checked his watch. “About an hour ago when I was helping her out of the benz.”
“I’m sensing a car theme.”
“Shut up.”
“Sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” he said, staring off into space. “They were both really...”
“Really what?”
“Really incredible. And don’t go tryin’ to use this against me like you’ve been doing all day. ‘Remember what I said about thrash talkin’, Jay,’” he mimicked. “Damn, you tell a friend you like a girl, and he uses it against you.”
“Oh, you said a lot more than that,” I laughed.
“Shut up. Here they come.”
I followed his gaze to the registration counter where Alex was checking out. A moment later the two friends were headed our way.
“How are you, Alex?” I asked, eyeing her crutches.
“I’ve been better, but I found the Kermit band-aid.”
“Excuse me?”
“The Kermit band-aid,” Elizabeth said, holding up Alex’s find. “The doctor gave her some Muppet Baby band-aids, and she wanted to find a Kermit one for me.”
“Do you guys need a ride to your hotel?” Justin asked, eager to help.
“No,” Alex replied. “Elizabeth already called a cab for us. You guys have already been too kind.”
“Are you sure? I don’t charge nearly as much.”
“Dork,” she laughed, hitting him in the leg with her crutch.
“You don’t need to chauffeur us around. I’m sure you have more important things to be doing,” Elizabeth smiled, looking up at me.
“Not really. We don’t have lives,” Justin urged.
“I told you she was in good hands,” I whispered to her.
“I know.”
“I think that’s our cab, Liz.”
She broke her gaze away from mine and turned to look out the door to the hospital. “We have to go guys.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Alex.” Justin kissed the top of her head before letting her walk away.
“It’s a deal.”
“Bye, Elizabeth. I’ll call you, alright?”
“Okay. I’ll talk to you then.”
“Bye.”
“Definitely gonna be together for a long time,” Justin said to me as we watched the girls climb into the yellow taxi. Deep down I hoped he was right.